And so it begins,,,,,, 5-speed Duster swap!

darndart said
I’ve got the bellhousing bolted to the engine. I plan on cutting the center of the torsion bar crossmember on Saturday, then mounting the transmission to the bellhousing and raising it up in the tunnel to see what kind of cuts I need to make in the floor pan. I am planning on welding a flat piece of 2 inch wide steel plate to the floor pan and to the torsion bar crossmember that I cut. Hopefully it will turn out similar to the photos I have attached. I also need to check the bell housing run out in case I need to order some offset dowel pins.

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That has almost no strength at all. The bending direction from the left to right of the car is basically nothing. I can bend 1/4" bar by hand without heating it. You need a 3D shape.

This is very stuff. It's made of similar materials but it controls flex and bending in both directions. Shouldn't be terribly hard to do it right. It's especially important since that's the crossmember the torsion bars are connected to.

The lower crossmember should be strong also, but I wouldn't rely on just that.

Been 6 years with the setup on my car but the car was stiff other than the edges of the floors as soon as that upper crossmember was in.